Ball Drops for First Time: Times Square is Born

A 700-pound iron-and-wood ball studded with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs descended from a flagpole atop the New York Times building at midnight on December 31, 1907, inaugurating the New Year Eve tradition that would make Times Square the symbolic center of the American calendar. An estimated 200,000 people packed the streets below, watching the illuminated sphere drop as a signal to usher in 1908. The tradition has continued unbroken every year since, except for wartime dimouts in 1942 and 1943. The celebration had actually begun three years earlier. When the New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly constructed Times Tower at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue in 1904, publisher Adolph Ochs organized an extravagant New Year Eve party with a fireworks display that drew enormous crowds. Longacre Square, the old name for the intersection, was officially renamed Times Square in the newspaper honor. The fireworks were spectacular but proved too dangerous for the densely packed urban setting, and the city banned them after the 1906 celebration. Ochs needed a replacement spectacle, and the ball drop was born. The concept borrowed from maritime time balls, where a sphere dropped at a precise moment from a port tower allowed ship captains to calibrate chronometers. Greenwich had been dropping one daily since 1833. Ochs adapted it for entertainment, making the descent last sixty seconds to reach bottom at exactly midnight. The ball has been redesigned multiple times, growing progressively larger and more technologically sophisticated. The current version, installed in 2008, is twelve feet in diameter and covered with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles illuminated by 32,256 LEDs. An estimated one billion people watch the drop on television each year. Times Square on New Year Eve remains the global symbol of collective celebration and the passage of time.